Undergraduate classroom presentations of the scientific method in the
social sciences usually involve a lecture on the nature of the
scientific enterprise: the discovery of the “truth” (if such a thing
even exists) about the relationship between some set of concepts,
events, or phenomena by means of generating falsifiable hypotheses
and testing them against data. The tendency of faculty, however
understandable, to convert the presentation into an abstract
discussion of the philosophy of science often obscures the basic
issues for students. I present here a simple, active learning
classroom exercise which sensitizes students to the difficulties of
hypothesizing about and testing unobservable phenomena by appealing
to students' intuitive understanding of the nature of knowledge and
reality. I first describe the purposes and objectives of the
activity in more detail, then discuss implementing this specific
activity. Suggestions for activity adaptation and development by
other instructors follow, and a brief discussion of sources and
resources concludes.